I am not surprised that I caught a cold after moving here. Seven weeks of travel and then a couple of high-stress weeks wrestling with apartments, money, residency and the start of grad school would be more than enough. Add to the mix that this is a new part of the country, which means new bugs; and 27,000 people have just arrived from their various parts of the world, bringing all their bugs with them, as well. I am just grateful that I got through the first full week of classes (by a matter of hours) before it hit me. I have gotten to the part where an embryonic Old One is forcing itself into this dimension through the various openings in my face, which means that by tomorrow I'll be looking and sounding worse but starting to feel better.

We have met once for the Creative Process class, and so the jury is out for me. How is he goinug to pull this together? Fifteen students, unevenly divided between creatives -- writers and singers and a dancer -- and business types. We'll start the discussion with Twyla Tharp on Monday.

I love the Dream Visions seminar, though I can see that I will be working hard. I am somewhat comforted that four of the nine people in the class dislike Chaucer (they confessed during our discussion of The Nun's Priest's Tale); I love him, so that should count in my favor, right? I should get at least half a grade just for that. The professor gives me the chance to write a short story for my final paper, but I suspect he's pretty rigorous about it.

The office: Fellow student (and SF writer) Eric Gregory and I share a space that feels like a converted factory, with offices ringing an open floor broken into non-Euclidean little spaces by cubicle walls, all overhung with an after-market catwalk under the big skylight, 25 feet up. Everything is cheap or old or broken or all three. Eric and I rifled two other cubicles to come up with two desks that had all their drawer pulls, and we discarded all three of the ratty little file cabinets we started with. I spend most of my days working there; it's been a couple of years since I worked with others, and many more years since I didn't have an office to myself, and it turns out I really enjoy the energy that comes from sharing space.

The previous tenant left a box filled with writing projects from an undergraduate creative-writing class, and I paged through a few. The quality ranged from scarcely literate to clever. Presentation varied nearly as much. One girl had overproduced her final packet with expensive section dividers in a posh matte-pink notebook, every page in a plastic sleeve. It didn't work, and the instructor gave her a C. Next year, that will be my box, my class assignments. I'll give some Cs, too.

There's a lot to be nervous about right now: I still don't have my student loan in hand; my brakes are going; I still have those not inconsiderable medical bills from the surgery this spring. I am still a long way from family and friends and Stone Gardens and the Locks. I still don't have internet at home. And now, a cold. But I am starting to find my way.